Yesaya 1:4

1:4 ¹ The sinful nation is as good as dead, ² 

the people weighed down by evil deeds.

They are offspring who do wrong,

children ³  who do wicked things.

They have abandoned the Lord,

and rejected the Holy One of Israel. ⁴ 

They are alienated from him. ⁵ 

Yesaya 9:17

9:17 So the sovereign master was not pleased ⁶  with their young men,

he took no pity ⁷  on their orphans and widows;

for the whole nation was godless ⁸  and did wicked things, ⁹ 

every mouth was speaking disgraceful words. ¹⁰ 

Despite all this, his anger does not subside,

and his hand is ready to strike again. ¹¹ 

Yesaya 65:25

65:25 A wolf and a lamb will graze together; ¹² 

a lion, like an ox, will eat straw, ¹³ 

and a snake’s food will be dirt. ¹⁴ 

They will no longer injure or destroy

on my entire royal mountain,” ¹⁵  says the Lord.

[1:4]  ¹ sn Having summoned the witnesses and announced the Lord’s accusation against Israel, Isaiah mourns the nation’s impending doom. The third person references to the Lord in the second half of the verse suggest that the quotation from the Lord (cf. vv. 2-3) has concluded.

[1:4]  ² tn Heb “Woe [to the] sinful nation.” The Hebrew term הוֹי, (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death. In highly dramatic fashion the prophet acts out Israel’s funeral in advance, emphasizing that their demise is inevitable if they do not repent soon.

[1:4]  ³ tn Or “sons” (NASB). The prophet contrasts four terms of privilege – nation, people, offspring, children – with four terms that depict Israel’s sinful condition in Isaiah’s day – sinful, evil, wrong, wicked (see J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 43).

[1:4]  ⁴ sn Holy One of Israel is one of Isaiah’s favorite divine titles for God. It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.

[1:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “they are estranged backward.” The LXX omits this statement, which presents syntactical problems and seems to be outside the synonymous parallelistic structure of the verse.

[9:17]  ⁶ tn The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has לא יחמול (“he did not spare”) which is an obvious attempt to tighten the parallelism (note “he took no pity” in the next line). Instead of taking שָׂמַח (samakh) in one of its well attested senses (“rejoice over, be pleased with”), some propose, with support from Arabic, a rare homonymic root meaning “be merciful.”

[9:17]  ⁷ tn The translation understands the prefixed verbs יִשְׂמַח (yismakh) and יְרַחֵם (yÿrakhem) as preterites without vav (ו) consecutive. (See v. 11 and the note on “he stirred up.”)

[9:17]  ⁸ tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “profaned”; NIV “ungodly.”

[9:17]  ⁹ tn מֵרַע (mera’) is a Hiphil participle from רָעַע (ra’a’, “be evil”). The intransitive Hiphil has an exhibitive force here, indicating that they exhibited outwardly the evidence of an inward condition by committing evil deeds.

[9:17]  ¹⁰ tn Or “foolishness” (NASB), here in a moral-ethical sense.

[9:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.”

[9:17]  sn See the note at 9:12.

[65:25]  ¹² sn A similar statement appears in 11:6.

[65:25]  ¹³ sn These words also appear in 11:7.

[65:25]  ¹⁴ sn Some see an allusion to Gen 3:14 (note “you will eat dirt”). The point would be that even in this new era the snake (often taken as a symbol of Satan) remains under God’s curse. However, it is unlikely that such an allusion exists. Even if there is an echo of Gen 3:14, the primary allusion is to 11:8, where snakes are pictured as no longer dangerous. They will no longer attack other living creatures, but will be content to crawl along the ground. (The statement “you will eat dirt” in Gen 3:14 means “you will crawl on the ground.” In the same way the statement “dirt will be its food” in Isa 65:25 means “it will crawl on the ground.”)

[65:25]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “in all my holy mountain.” These same words appear in 11:9. See the note there.

[65:25]  sn As in 11:1-9 the prophet anticipates a time when the categories predator-prey no longer exist. See the note at the end of 11:8.